Linda Brent and Jim: Two Slaves a World Apart - Term Paper Example

«Linda Brent and Jim: Two Slaves a World Apart» Harriet Jacobs’s autobiography Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl and Mark Twain’s novel The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn are books that each paint a powerful picture of slavery in their own way. Jacobs’s narrative is supposedly her autobiography, with the names changed for the safety of all involved. Linda Brent is actually Jacobs herself. It recounts the harrowing tale of her life as a slave, her escape to a hiding place in a tiny crawlspace, and her rescue of her daughter. Huck Finn, by contrast, is a work of fiction. The novel tells the story of the friendship between a white boy, Huckleberry Finn, and a black slave, Jim. Both are running away: Huck from his cruel father, and Jim from slavery and the possibility of being sold into an even worse situation. For Jim, a man, escape is difficult, but it is still far easier for him than it is for Linda, a woman. As a work of fiction written by a white man years after the Civil War, Huck Finn gives a slightly sanitized view of slavery. To some extent, the book does portray a realistic situation. Jim’s story was based on a common occurrence before the Civil War in Missouri along the Mississippi River, where Mark Twain lived. Many slaves would have tried to escape in a similar manner, often for the same reasons. Jim escapes because he is about to be sold “down the river,” to New Orleans, where slaves are treated far more brutally. He would also be permanently taken away from his wife and his children. Despite all this, Jim’s experiences are toned-down in comparison to Linda’s in Incidents. Jim says his owner, Miss Watson, treated him “pooty rough,” but does not go into much detail about this (Twain 53). The suffering Jim has endured, and would endure in if he were to be sent to New Orleans, is never fully described. Part of the reasoning for this is that Huck Finn is the sequel to The Adventures of Tom Saywer, a children’s book. It is told from the point of view of Huck, a child, and a white boy who does not fully understand the implications of slavery. It wouldn’t have been appropriate for Twain to describe the most disturbing parts of slavery in a book that might appeal to children, and it probably would have upset audiences for Huck to know too much about such an emotionally troubling subject. The book was written after slavery had ended, and it was not intended as an abolitionist text or a polemic against slavery. Instead it was meant to be the coming-of-age tale of a boy learning to see the humanity in someone society had proclaimed a non-person. There was no reason for Twain to describe the most brutal details of slavery when descriptions of Jim’s fear and sadness would be enough to make him a sympathetic character without making the story too dark for the intended audience. In contrast to Huck Finn, Incidents was pre-war abolitionist literature written by a black woman who was a former slave. The point of the book was to convince people who lived with slavery that the practice was wrong, and that black people were human beings. In order to show the evils of slavery, Incidents gives a much more shocking and detailed account of a slave’s life. After being sold to the Flint family, Linda lives in constant fear of being raped by Dr. Flint or murdered by his jealous wife. Yet she knows that there are others who suffer much more than her. She describes her relative good fortune compared to other slaves: I was never cruelly overworked; I was never lacerated with the whip from head to foot; I was never so beaten and bruised that I could not turn from one side to the other; I never had my heel-strings cut to prevent my running away; I was never chained to a log and forced to drag it about, while I toiled in the fields from morning till night; I was never branded with hot iron, or torn by bloodhounds. (174) Despite the fact that Linda does not suffer the torture visited upon many other people, she would rather live confined in a tiny coffin-like garret for years than live as a slave. In addition to this, there is one other important difference between Jim and Linda. Jim is a man and Linda is a woman. Because Jim is a man, he is able to escape more easily than Linda. Jim simply runs off as soon as he hears Miss Watson discussing selling him with a slave trader. There is no planning other than his quick thought that he won’t be missed for at least a day, no subterfuge, no need for disguises or help. Of course Jim’s escape is fictional, and it’s unlikely that most people in his situation, male or female, would have been able to escape so easily. But the way that Twain writes the situation is believable. It is much easier for Jim to leave his children behind when he knows their mother will be there to care for him. As a slave, Jim did not have the right to stay with his children or take care of them if his owner chose to separate him from them. Slave or not, as a nineteenth-century man, taking care of the children was not his job. His family might miss him, but they don’t need him so desperately that he can’t try to escape to save himself. Leaving his wife and children is a painful, miserable experience for Jim, but Jim is not the primary caregiver to his children, so he can leave them without worrying about them too much. He knows they are safe with their mother. When the choice is leaving them and being sold down the river or leaving them and escaping to freedom, Jim naturally chooses the better of the two options. Linda has no such luxury. She has to be imaginative and come up with a third option. Her initial escape is difficult and requires a great deal of planning. As a woman, it is more difficult for her to leave the plantation and go out alone. Once she has left, she can’t go far. She chooses to stay in a cramped garret in her grandmother’s nearby home rather than try to run north to safety and leave her children behind. By going into hiding, Linda slips into a sort of purgatory between slavery and freedom. She is no longer a slave, and therefore safe from the horrors of slavery, yet trapped in a tiny space, unable to move for long periods of time, she is certainly not free. Linda’s life is inexorably tied to the lives of her children, and leaving them would doom them to a life of misery. She must stay near her children in order to ensure that they will not be sold to a worse owner than the Flints. She has some relief when they are sold to their father, Mr. Sands, but she can’t fully trust him to care for them. Even after they are free, she still fears that he might one day decide to sell them. Her final flight north is only spurred on by her need to rescue her daughter from the potential danger of ending up enslaved. This marks a distinct difference between the lives of Linda and Jim. While both books tell aspects of the story of slavery and teach important lessons about history and racism, each has a slightly different goal. Huck Finn was and still is a very important book that brings some of the harsh realities of slavery to a wide audience. A book by a beloved white Southern author that featured characters of beloved children’s literature was a powerful tool for fighting racism in the age of Jim Crow laws. To this day The Adventure of Huckleberry Finn remains a literary treasure. However, it can’t take the place of the first-hand accounts of slavery written by former slaves themselves. Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl eloquently tells the true story of a slave and puts the reader in her shoes. Mark Twain made a valiant attempt at trying to understand what it was like to be a slave, but he didn’t have access to the more insightful point of view of Harriet Jacobs, a woman who actually lived through it. Works Cited Jacobs, Harriet Ann. Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl. 1861. New York: Dover, 2001. Print. Twain, Mark. The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. 1884. New York: Penguin Books, 1985. Print. Read More